


got nothing to lose but emptiness and hang-ups

by beethechange



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment
Genre: Comeplay, Don't Proposition Someone on the Floor of a Haunted Prison, Double Penetration, In the Ghost Hunting Industry that's Probably Considered Rude, Multi, Warning for Some Mustache Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:23:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22636702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: “My girlfriend wants to have a threesome,” Shane tells him. “A, uh—aménage a trois, if you will.”Ryan absolutely willnot.This is not a place for such conversations, even if they were the kind of friends who have them—and they aren’t. There’s nowhere Shane could say that to him and have it be normal, but in this place it strikes Ryan as particularly unseemly.“Shane, this is ahaunted prison,” Ryan says helplessly, the way you might saysir, this is an Arby’s.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej, Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej/Sara Rubin, Shane Madej/Sara Rubin
Comments: 47
Kudos: 437





	got nothing to lose but emptiness and hang-ups

**Author's Note:**

> happy shyanara sunday to my babes! thanks to catt and eva for the betas, and credit for the "orifices" joke goes entirely to eva.
> 
> please heed the tags. if you're in the tags and you read this...well, i hope you like it, i guess. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> the title's from the song ["got nuffin" by spoon.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4Q9zngV52U)

*

“Hey, what about Ryan?” Sara asks one Sunday morning.

She takes care to say it very casually, as if it hasn’t consumed her every waking thought—and plenty of her sleeping ones—for the last several weeks.

She’s made them a spinach frittata for breakfast. It’s a beautiful morning, the windows and the door to the balcony thrown wide, and you can almost pretend you’re not in California when the breeze blows in just right. Timing, she knows, is everything with Shane.

“What about him?” Shane asks absentmindedly. He’s got three different sections of the Sunday LA _Times_ spread out on the floor. Obi’s rotating around from section to section, plopping down over the pages in an attempt to capture Shane’s attention, and Shane’s negotiating around him to pet, read, and eat at the same time.

“You know. For that thing we’ve been talking about.”

It’s possible he’s not fully listening, or that it’s still too early for subtle insinuations.

“The _thing_,” Sara repeats. Then, to eliminate confusion, she makes a crude gesture that requires both hands and most of her fingers and has Shane’s eyebrows shooting up for his hairline. He blinks several times in quick succession, as if he’s trying to get the last bits of sleep out of his eyes.

“No,” Shane says. “What? _No_. Sar, are you high right now? We can get you the help you need. We’ll put you in whatever treatment facility RDJ used.”

“You can’t afford it,” she jokes. She wasn’t expecting immediate agreement anyway. “Seriously, it’s the ideal arrangement. We know him. We trust him. I assume he’s experienced enough that we wouldn’t need to babysit him—”

“Oh my_ god_—” Shane’s still shaking his head, looking astounded that she even suggested it.

“He ticks the boxes. My boxes, anyway.”

“I have to sit next to him five days a week for the next however many years of my life. Ideally I’d be able to, you know, _look him in the eye_ for some of that time.”

Sara waves it away with a dismissive flap of her hand. “It’s 2019, babe. People don’t get squirrely about that stuff like they used to.”

Shane snorts so loudly that Obi jumps up, startled and aggrieved, and does a skittish sideways dance out of the room.

“You think _Ryan_ wouldn’t get squirrely if we asked him to take you to pound town? We are talking about the same Ryan here, right? My Ryan? Ryan Bergara. The actual squirreliest person we both know.”

“Oho, _your_ Ryan!” Sara fails to stifle her smile when Shane’s ears go a little pink. “Yes, that’s the one. About yea high, big arms, nice smile? Loves popcorn, horror movies, probably long walks on the beach?”

“You’ve lost your mind. That’s a—what a terrible idea. Oh my god, what a shitshow. Can you imagine?”

Shane pulls his long legs in, rustling and ripping newspaper in his consternation. He’s using his fork to make the point, gesticulating with it in Sara’s direction, which is how she knows he’s good and worked up. That’s exactly where she wants him.

“Obviously I can imagine,” Sara says. “What do you think I’ve been doing since we talked about it?”

Shane opens his mouth for a retort, and then he looks disappointed in himself when nothing clever comes out. He bites his lip, uncomfortably caught between annoyed and turned on—a space Sara privately thinks of as the Ryan Zone, because it’s where the dude does all his best work.

“Sara, he’d never say yes. There is no one more monogamous than Ryan. He’s the guy with a wife and two kids and four dogs and a literal white picket fence, about five years down the line.”

“Maybe. But five years down the line isn’t now.”

“He’s the—he’s straight,” Shane persists. “And I can’t even give him the whole ‘it’s not gay if the balls don’t touch’ routine because, like, logistically—the, uh, geography—”

“Oh, those bad boys are touchin’.”

“Right.”

“You’ve given me several good reasons why it’s a bad idea,” Sara says. “But you still haven’t said you don’t want to. You haven’t said you wouldn’t want him in our bed.”

Shane rubs his forehead, looking pained. He tips his head back, all the way back so it rests against the cushion of the couch, so Sara can’t see his eyes.

“I know I haven’t,” he says, and Sara knows then that this is an argument she will eventually win.

*

“My girlfriend wants to have a threesome,” Shane tells him. “A, uh—a _ménage a trois_, if you will.”

Ryan absolutely will _not_.

This is not a place for such conversations, even if they were the kind of friends who have them—and they aren’t. There’s nowhere Shane could say that to him and have it be normal, but in this place it strikes Ryan as particularly unseemly.

“Shane, this is a _haunted prison_,” Ryan says helplessly, the way you might say _sir, this is an Arby’s_. He’s so surprised he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly worried about the ghosts hearing.”

“But the cameras are chill?”

Shane hums, a low rumble of agreement. He shuffles around, slipping out of his sleeping bag to feel around in the dark. Ryan sees the little red light on the static cam go off a few long, fumbling moments later.

Seriously, the suspense is killing him.

“Sara,” Shane finally begins again, as if the identity of his girlfriend was the part Ryan was confused about, “has assigned me the task of procuring and arranging, for her, a threesome.”

“Weird ‘honey do’ list, but okay,” Ryan says. He has no idea why Shane’s telling him this. He has no idea why Shane is telling him this on a dirty, decrepit floor, in full view and hearing of a dozen lingering tortured souls. “Is it at least the fun kind?”

Shane’s turned in Ryan’s direction but Ryan can’t see his face, because the lighting is so dim and because there’s a glare off the window catching and glinting off his glasses. Ryan feels like he’s answered his own question: this is why now and why here. So Ryan can’t see him.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” he says. “The _fun kind_?”

“_You know_,” Ryan says, digging.

Shane sighs again. Ryan’s not sure why he started this conversation in the first place, if he didn’t want to talk about it. God knows they’d been doing really well not talking about threesomes for the first five years of their friendship. That had been a good run.

“Are we talking two Vs one P, or two Ps one V?” Ryan asks. He doesn’t know how to make conversation about this until he knows the parameters of the query. Because there _is_ a question hidden in here somewhere; he’s just got to wait until Shane gets around to articulating it. “Or three Vs while you go grocery shopping?”

“Sometimes,” Shane says, “I really hate you.”

“Dude, I don’t know why you would bring up threesomes if you didn’t want me asking you this, the most basic and essential question about threesomes.”

Shane hesitates. Ryan can hear his breath catch before he lets it out, a slow exhale. “The two Ps one.”

Ryan can’t help it; he laughs out loud. “Good for her.”

“Good for everyone,” Shane says in that calm, quiet way he has. Ryan’s not sure if it’s some sort of small confession or if it’s just Shane’s way of getting through this conversation with his dignity intact.

“Well, good talk, I guess. I’m just not sure why you decided to share this with me on the floor of a rat-infested historic landmark. This doesn’t feel like any of my business.”

“Ahaha,” Shane says, making a noise that _resembles_ laughing, absent the actual mirth. “Well, actually. Now we’ve come to the crux of the thing. Would you like it to be your business?”

*

And _then_ Ryan’s laying on his back on the floor of a haunted prison, sort of phasing in and out of his own body while he listens to Shane stutter out the weirdest proposition he—or likely anyone—has ever received.

“So in conclusion, uh, if you ever wanted to bang my girlfriend or to, like, check something off the ol’ bucket list…well. Now’s your chance,” Shane finishes his pitch.

Ryan waits for the ringing in his ears to subside before he opens his mouth. Then, when he does, a high-pitched giggle emerges. “_In conclusion_. Like you’re trying to win a college debate tournament.”

Shane’s shrug is so exaggerated that Ryan can see it even in the dark. “This was not easy for me, okay?”

“Well, I’m flattered.”

He can feel Shane waiting for the _but_. Ryan doesn’t give it to him, not right away. It’s so rare that he has the opportunity to make Shane squirm, even a little, that he can’t pass it up.

“Listen, it’s an honor just to be nominated, truly—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I told Sara you’d be a nightmare about this.”

“Sorry,” Ryan says, not sorry in the least, “but that was _outrageously_ rude of you. Maybe you should be a little nicer to the guy you just asked to pork your girlfriend.”

Shane winces a little at the crassness, which strikes Ryan as pretty rich indeed.

“So why me?” he asks. “Just out of curiosity.”

“I’m not going to stroke your ego,” Shane snaps. “It was ladies’ choice.”

Ryan’s not sure why he’s surprised, but he is. No girl ever even asked him to a Sadie Hawkins dance in high school, and to be chosen for this feels much higher stakes than that. He and Sara are friends—he likes her, respects her, _loves_ her, even—but if there’s been any suggestion of attraction from her he’s missed it completely.

“She trusts you,” Shane goes on, a little softer now. “She—I—we trust you. You’d be careful and discreet.”

“You really know how to sweet talk a guy,” Ryan says, thinking that _careful and discreet _sounds like a fairly lukewarm endorsement. “I—well. I mean, it’s gotta be a no from me, dude. But I really am weirdly honored that she thought of me, and you can tell her that.”

Shane rolls over, cozying into his sleeping bag as if he means to go to sleep. Ryan’s not sure how he can be so relaxed at a time like this. Ryan himself might never sleep again.

“_Obviously_ it’s a no,” Shane says, his voice a little obscured by the rustling of the ripstop nylon. “I just promised her I’d ask, so I had to ask.”

“Well. Good,” Ryan says, like that settles it. Shane doesn’t say anything more, and soon Ryan hears the familiar steady, even breathing that says he’s already fallen asleep.

*

But the more he thinks about it, Ryan doesn’t feel good, and it doesn’t feel settled.

The Unsolved trip ends, they return to L.A., and Ryan stews. He’s the kind of guy who still runs through awkward conversations from middle school in his head and cringes, so this one won’t be going away anytime soon.

“Obviously,” Shane had said. “_Obviously_.” Ryan’s not sure if his whirlwind anxious brain is imagining the layers of meaning in that—the perfunctory dismissive nature of it, the lack of surprise at being turned down, even palpable relief. As he turns it over in his mind, Ryan finds he’s offended in at least three different ways.

First: it suggests that Shane doesn’t think much of Sara’s taste. Ryan’s own initial thought had been “why me?,” a degree of self-conscious lack of confidence Ryan would consider normal for himself. But clearly Shane was _also_ wondering _why Ryan_, and now that Ryan’s out of the moment he’s kind of indignant about it.

Maybe Shane doesn’t think he’s good in bed. Maybe Shane thinks he’s not mature enough to handle it. Maybe—ugh—maybe he thinks Ryan’s a selfish lover, a typical bro, not up to the job in some crucial way.

Second: It suggests that Shane doesn’t think Ryan’s secure enough in himself or his sexuality to consider such an arrangement. He’d clearly asked out of obligation, knowing full well that Ryan would say no. That hurts. Ryan’s not the same guy he was a few years ago, okay? His sense of self is not so precarious that he’ll freak out if there are too many dicks on the dance floor.

Third: Ryan wonders if maybe Shane’s got someone else in mind, someone he’d prefer. It’s an unbelievably stupid thing to catch on—why does it matter who gets a job after you’ve turned it down?—but the thought of an imagined rival, a dark horse candidate for the position of stunt dick, rouses Ryan’s competitive spirit.

“Fuck you, I’m a great choice,” he tells Shane over lunch in the canteen on a random Thursday—resuming, with absolutely no warning, the argument Shane can’t know they’ve been having in Ryan’s head for weeks. “You should be so lucky!”

“Say what now,” Shane says around a bite of ham and cheese sandwich.

“I’d be an _excellent_ third,” Ryan presses on. “I am a very generous lover.”

“Oh. Oh, no. Oh, Ryan.”

“I am open-minded,” Ryan hisses, tapping the table in agitation. “I am_ sexually adventurous_.”

It’s not true, not really. But Ryan feels like it’s true in spirit. It _could_ be true. He feels like he could be the kind of guy who might _consider_ becoming sexually adventurous, given the right circumstances, and it rankles to have this potential dismissed outright.

Shane looks mildly alarmed to be having this conversation at their place of work, but Ryan doesn’t care. Turnabout’s fair play. Maybe next time Shane will think twice before sexually propositioning someone in one of the most notoriously haunted structures in the continental United States.

Shane finishes chewing his bite, swallowing with the aid of a generous gulp from his bottle of water. It seems to take forever.

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Shane says eventually.

“It was implied.”

Ryan’s a little embarrassed by how sour he sounds, how un-chill, but it can’t be helped. This is a matter of principle.

“Was it?”

“You know it was.” Ryan’s getting a little too loud. He can tell because Kelsey shoots him a look from the next table over and scuttles away to eat her yogurt somewhere less fraught with weird energy.

“I’m—what is happening here.”

Ryan brings his voice low again. “Who do you have on deck who’s so much better, anyway?”

Shane’s eyebrows knit together.

“It’s not a competition, Ryan,” he says finally. “Like, it wasn’t your thing, and that’s cool. We thought we might ask Matty.”

“_Matty_!” Ryan’s aghast. “He doesn’t believe in the moon landing!”

“What can I say? We like ‘em dumb. Gullible, like. Prone to wild conspiracy theories.” Shane shoots him a significant look, which Ryan chooses to ignore.

“He’s got that mustache.”

“I sometimes have a mustache,” Shane points out. “Sara likes it. She says it makes her feel like a naughty ’70s porn ingenue.”

Ryan has to table that one for now. “Two mustaches seems like too many for one bed.”

Shane shrugs. “He just looks like he’d lay good pipe, doesn’t he? There’s something about his attitude.”

Ryan sort of sees what he means. Matty’s got swagger, in his own way. It’s clear he doesn’t really give a fuck what people think about him, which can sometimes be confused for confidence. Ryan doesn’t think it’s exactly the same thing.

“I lay excellent pipe,” Ryan says, petulant.

“I’m sure you do, bud,” Shane agrees. “That’s why we asked you first. You said no, remember?”

For some reason the placid agreement annoys Ryan even more. He feels condescended to, _placated_. And then something else occurs to him.

He narrows his eyes. He scours Shane’s face.

“Are you trying to _reverse psychology me_ into fucking your girlfriend?”

“I’m trying to eat my lunch!” Shane finally breaks, verging into frustration. Ryan’s just pleased to have gotten a reaction, any reaction.

“I think you are,” he says. “I think you’re trying to get me to change my mind. Well, it won’t work. I’m not so easily suggestible as that.”

“Okay,” Shane agrees. “Can I finish my sandwich now? I’ve got a conference call in like ten minutes.”

“No means no, Shane!”

Ryan gets up from the table, making a show of it so his chair scrapes loudly across the floor. He’s about to flounce off in a huff, but on his way out of the canteen he almost barrels directly into Sara on her way in.

“Easy there, tiger,” she says with a wink, reaching out a hand to steady herself on his shoulder.

Ryan lacks the vocabulary to articulate what he’s feeling, especially when he remembers the ’70s porn ingenue thing. Instead he just makes a garbled noise, brushes her hand off to spin around her, and makes a beeline for the exit.

“I see your trickery!” he lobs over his shoulder on the way out. “I’m not falling for it! You’re going to have to get up way earlier in the morning to lure the ol’ Bergmeister in with your wiles!”

“Bergmeister?” Sara asks from behind him, and then “_wiles_?” but he’s already gone.

*

The thing is, though: there are considerations.

There’s Sara.

Ryan’s always thought she was cute. She’s cute, and she’s funny, and she’s smart. Her hair is very curly and her eyes are very sparkly, and—yeah. Ryan’s thought about it, okay? She’s his friend’s girlfriend, but he’s only human. He’s only one human man.

There’s also the issue of Ryan’s natural and healthy curiosity about the world. He’s wondered before, privately, what Shane and Sara are like together, in the way that he sometimes finds himself considering the sex lives of random couples he sees out and about. Shane is, after all, very tall, and Sara is very tiny. It raises logistical questions, if not concerns.

There’s plenty to be curious about. Shane’s something of an enigma to him, even after all this time. He’s one of the least naturally flirtatious people Ryan’s ever met, and his and Sara’s PDA is nonexistent. The chance to get a peek into this aspect of his private life, one Ryan always assumed was closed to him, is interesting.

And after all, Ryan’s pushing thirty now. He’ll be wanting to settle down soon. Any day now he’ll meet _the one_ and marry her and that will be that. If there’s ever a time for sowing his wild oats, such as they are, surely it’s now.

Finally, despite his protestations, Ryan’s feeling a distinct need to prove himself.

For all of these reasons, and possibly some that have gone unexamined, Ryan finds himself revisiting the question a lot over the following weeks.

“What would this thing entail, anyway?” he blurts out. They’re sitting ten rows deep at the ArcLight, waiting for their showing of The Lighthouse to start.

“I think it’s about Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson going crazy in a lighthouse,” Sara offers from the other side of Shane. She reaches over to scavenge some popcorn from the massive tub in Ryan’s lap.

“No, that’s—yeah. I meant the, the—_ménage a_ _whatever_. I guess I was just wondering if there was, like, a specific vision or an ethos or…never mind.”

“_Ménage a_ _whatever_.” Sara squints at him, her hand still caught awkwardly in the bucket in his lap. She withdraws her hand slowly, like she’s afraid to make any sudden movements.

“An ethos?” Shane asks. “For sex?”

“I think the ethos is that we would have it,” Sara says.

“Right.” Ryan turns his own attention to the popcorn, just for something to do with his hands.

“Just once it might be good to have these conversations somewhere appropriate,” Shane says.

“Oh yeah, because the abandoned haunted death-trap prison was such a good—”

“At least it was _private_.”

“Not if you count the ghosts!”

“In what universe, Ryan? In what universe would I be counting the ghosts?”

“And the camera.”

“I turned that off!”

“Boys,” Sara interjects at a whisper, her tone sharp, reminding them where they are. “The movie’s about to start, and frankly I can only concentrate on one tense and vaguely homoerotic prestige drama at a time. We can have this conversation at home.”

“It’s not _tense_,” Shane says tensely.

“It’s not _homoerotic_,” Ryan says at the same time.

“Mmm.”

The opening credits roll.

*

He grabs a ride with Shane and Sara, back to their place. Ryan’s incredibly uncomfortable, but he’s suppressing all his natural instincts in service to his lifetime dedication to proving Shane wrong.

“Good movie,” he says, grasping for something meaningful to say. “I liked it.”

“Good! A good…a good film,” Shane agrees.

“Oh my god.” Sara twists around in her seat to look back at Ryan in the backseat, fighting a little against the seatbelt. “We’re not doing this the whole way home. Ryan, I’m in the market for a good old-fashioned stuffin’ all the holes scenario. That’s the ethos.”

She says it like she’s shopping for a used car. Ryan’s jaw falls open unbidden. He can feel himself catching flies, he knows he must look ridiculous, and he snaps it shut again.

“Oh,” he says. “Wow.”

“Double your penetration, double your fun,” Shane says, singsong, to the tune of the old Doublemint commercials. Ryan kind of wants to strangle him.

“I told Shane he should lead with that, but he was being a real butt.”

Shane catches Ryan’s eye in the rearview mirror. His brown eyes are wary, sharper than usual. Nervous. His face is red. Ryan finds that reassuring, actually. Sara doesn’t seem at _all_ flustered, and Ryan would be so annoyed if he was the only person in this car who was embarrassed.

“I thought it was preferable to ease into things,” Shane says. “Not unlike—well. No, that’s too easy a joke. I’m better than that.”

“You’re really not,” Sara says. “But yeah, it’s something I’ve been wanting to try for a while. And, like, toys are good, but they’re not the same, are they?”

“No?” Ryan guesses, feeling way in over his head already.

“I just wanted to know that the dynamic would be right, you know. Because it’s such a, it’s such a _thing_, you don’t want just some random guy.”

“I can see how you wouldn’t.” Ryan is struggling here. He’s really struggling. It is difficult to hold up his end of a conversation when his entire brain is in the process of being buried under an avalanche of extraordinary mental images. He’s not sure where he’d been expecting this chat to go, but it’s taken a real hard swerve.

“I want a friend, someone I know Shane works well with. And the two of you are such a good team.” 

“Yeah, when we’re recording VO or doing bits for a camera. But this is not…the same thing at all.”

Ryan’s not at _all_ sure that their ease and adversarial familiarity in front of a camera would translate to extracurricular pursuits. His doubt must show on his face, because Sara laughs softly. 

“I think you’d be great, or I wouldn’t have asked. I think we’d have fun. But obviously if you don’t want to you don’t want to, and that’s all you ever need to say.”

They sit in silence for a little while. Ryan stares out the window, watching the headlights of the cars passing them in the opposite direction zoom past, blurry whites and blues converging together to make his eyes swim.

This is, he recognizes, the sort of offer that may not come around again. He’s always been the guy who jumped from serious relationship to serious relationship, never that much time in between. Even in college he wasn’t good at the whole hookup culture.

It would never have occurred to him to seek it out, but now that the offer’s fallen in his lap he sort of…he sort of _wants_ to.

“I might be interested,” he finally says, as Shane eases the car off the highway at their exit. “If…well. If Shane’s on board. Because I have to say he didn’t seem that enthusiastic about it before, and I’m not about to step on a landmine and blow up my whole life.”

Shane’s eyes meet his in the mirror again: surprised, assessing. Reassessing, probably. They slide away again, to seek out Sara’s for some incomprehensible, silent couple conversation.

“I thought you’d get freaked out if I seemed enthusiastic,” he says. “I thought it was safer if you didn’t really think about me much at all.”

There’s a small, subtle ache in Ryan’s rib cage, somewhere between his belly and his heart. He’s always known that Shane doesn’t tell him everything, that there are pieces of his life he doesn’t want to share—or thinks Ryan doesn’t want to know. This is, Ryan suspects, dancing around the edge of one of those things.

“I don’t think threesomes work that way.”

“Look who’s suddenly an expert,” Sara crows, but Shane’s shaking his head.

“I think they _can_ work that way,” Shane says, carefully sidestepping Sara’s attempts at jocularity. Ryan can feel the delicacy in his tone, and he wonders when he became the kind of person who had to be tiptoed around and cautiously handled. He doesn’t think he likes that. “There are a lot of models for success. I don’t want you to think we’re pushing for more than you’re comfortable with.”

“_Models for success_,” Ryan mimics. “You sound like a stockbroker. You sound like Steven Lim pitching to sponsors. Why don’t you say what you really mean?”

“He’s saying he won’t touch you, Ryan. Jesus,” Sara says, rolling her eyes. “I’ll be the main event, so to speak.”

“There will probably be some incidental contact, given the nature of the thing. But we can work out a plan to keep it minimal if that’s what’s—if that’s a factor.”

Ryan frowns. Of course this was a thing he’d been thinking about, but he doesn’t like how Shane just assumed it would be a sticking point. He has a hunch that it’s deeply uncool to be anxious about such things, just as it is fundamentally deeply uncool to have anxiety about threesomes in general. It’s too bad, then, that this is simply the person he is.

“We don’t have to get caught up in the specifics of who does what to who,” Sara says hurriedly, as if she senses Ryan’s growing pique. “Why don’t you just come up for a nightcap? We can talk, or whatever feels right. I can’t—the main event’s off the table, that takes some prep, but anything else is fair game.”

Ryan can feel himself starting to get worked up, just this side of panicky about the whole thing, and he digs the nails of his right hand hard into his palm until he can joke and make it sound believable.

“Why do I feel like this is a sex audition?” he asks. “It’s like the second to last episode of the Bachelor, when he gets to bang the top three to see who he wants to bang again for the next four months until they break up on the cover of _People_.”

“What a great show,” Sara says happily.

Ryan’s thinking of saying no, that he needs to think about this some more, but then they arrive at Shane and Sara’s and he gets watch Sara wiggle out of the passenger seat in her little shorts.

“I guess I can come up for a while,” Ryan says, sliding out of the backseat. “Have a beer.” He flushes when Shane catches him looking and raises his eyebrows, like _I know, right?_

It’s not like it’s a commitment or anything. It’s just one drink. If it gets weird, if Ryan doesn’t like it, he can always leave.

Probably he’ll leave.

*

An hour later, sitting astride Ryan’s lap on her couch, Sara’s pretty sure this is going to work out great after all.

They’re kissing, and it’s very nice. He’s a good kisser, as she suspected he would be. Loose and improvisational but not sloppy, possessed of self-direction but not demanding. He’s got his hands on her waist, where her t-shirt’s come untucked from her shorts, although that was a battle; he’d let his hands hover an inch from her skin for the longest time before he’d finally allowed them to settle there, as if he’d expected Sara to flinch away.

Sara feels sure, all over again, that she’s chosen well. She can tell he’s hard in his shorts, although he is making every effort to keep his hips still, to stay polite. She thinks about sinking further down in his lap as a reward for good behavior, but she holds off for the moment.

He’s still very nervous, his focus pulled between Sara on his lap and Shane off to the side, in an armchair, watching intently.

Ryan doesn’t realize how transparent he is, how easy to read. He’d be mortified if he knew.

Sara still thinks about the first time she’d noticed it, sometimes, when she needs something to get her going. She’d been in the front row of the audience for one of their live shows, one of the festivals, maybe VidCon. She’d watched Ryan tell a story to the audience, only then she’d realized he was really telling it to _Shane_ and the audience just happened to also be there.

He’d looked at Shane every few words, checking in, making sure Shane was laughing. Licking his lips like he was alone in the desert and Shane was the tallest drink of water he ever saw. Lighting up when Shane grinned at him. _Of course_, Sara had thought, _I was a fool not to see it before_, and she’d gone all over warm and curious.

Ryan’s doing it again now, without even realizing it. Every few moments he’ll break off their kiss to toss his head, to make some small needy noise, to whisper into her neck. He’s performing for Shane, even if he doesn’t realize that’s what he’s doing, and every time he tosses a stray glance Shane’s direction to see if it’s landing it makes Sara a little wetter.

She slides her hands along his stomach under his shirt, feeling his abs tense, and then she leans back a little to pull the shirt up and over his head.

To their right, Shane leans in a little, a flicker of movement in her periphery. Ryan must sense it too, because he chances a look over. Whatever he sees there makes him lose that last little bit of control, pulling Sara close against him so she can feel _exactly_ how hard he is through the stupidly thin basketball shorts he seems to have mistaken for clothing that adults wear.

Sara pulls her own shirt off too, and she’s not wearing a bra under it, and that recaptures Ryan’s attention in a hurry.

“Sara,” he says, sounding blown clean away, and she smiles and taps him on the bridge of his nose.

“You’re good,” she says, “in and out,” and he exhales shakily like he needed the reminder.

“I keep thinking your boyfriend’s gonna get up and punch me for putting my hands on you,” he admits, his voice a low murmur. Shane can probably hear, but only just.

“You should touch me more and see what he does,” Sara says, and she doesn’t miss the way Ryan shivers into her. She runs her hands down Ryan’s sides to settle him. “More likely he’s gonna bust a hole through his pants with his giant _boner_.”

Sara gets up to shimmy out of her jean shorts. She stretches a little for show as she kicks them to the side, enjoying the feel of two pairs of eyes on her. She can feel them watching every flex of every muscle, the point of every toe. Then she settles back down onto Ryan’s lap, the least dressed person in the room but somehow not the most naked.

He can’t resist it now, slipping a finger along the leg elastic of her underwear, under the waistband. He can smell her, he wants to touch her, and she goes up higher on her knees to give him the space to do it.

To her surprise, he pulls away again.

“This feels wrong,” he says, although he does give a lovely little sigh when Sara settles herself back down against him. She hopes he can feel the heat of her, the wetness at the crotch of her panties where she’s already soaked through.

“Wrong how?” she asks him, gasping when he runs a thumb in a circle around her nipple until it’s tight and sensitive. He brushes the tip of his thumb over the peak of it, only barely touching her.

“You said you wanted a threesome,” Ryan says, and he nudges his chin in Shane’s direction again, so Sara’s not quite sure which of them he’s speaking to. He seems to be talking to the several feet of empty space between the couch and Shane’s chair. “This is more like…two people getting it on while the third watches from the bench.”

It’s brave of him, Sara thinks, in his way. He can’t bring himself to ask for it, not yet, but he can goad.

Shane calls his bluff. He stands up, clapping his hands to his pockets like he’s checking for his wallet and keys “You’re right, it’s weird,” he says. “I can leave.”

“What?”

Shane shrugs. “Go into the den and let you two get on with it. Play a little Tetris Effect. Hit the hay.”

“But,” Ryan starts. He goes quiet, but he’s got a stubborn jut to his chin now.

“But?” Shane asks. There’s a little battle going on now, of wills or egos, and Sara rather hopes Ryan wins.

“But it’s not what Sara wants,” Ryan says, and then he holds his breath like he’s hoping they’ll let him get away with it just this once. Out of pure self-interest, Sara’s willing to let it slide.

“That is true,” she says, turning her head up to Shane, smiling sweetly at him, and he nods.

“Fair enough,” he agrees, and instead of sitting down again he settles to kneel by the couch. “Hey, put me in, coach.”

Sara’s stomach flips, and she knows she’s about to have a very good night.

*

Ryan doesn’t know what makes him say it. He only knows that despite how good Sara feels, how much he wants her, it isn’t quite _right._

He just can’t get in the zone, not with Shane sitting there watching them and saying nothing and doing _nothing_. It feels wrong the way filming a video without Shane feels wrong, sometimes. Like without someone to bounce off of, to react to, to push against, Ryan doesn’t quite know himself or where he fits in.

So he pushes, like the awkward, gormless weirdo he knows himself to be, and suddenly Shane’s at a kneel six inches away from him and Ryan’s feeling like he’s about to be experiencing a bad case of _be careful what you wish for_.

“Hey, put me in, coach,” Shane says. “You look like you could use an extra pair of hands.”

Trying to see him past the curl of Sara’s hair and the gentle curve of her shoulder is making Ryan’s eyes cross. Trying to figure out exactly what he means by that is making all the wires in Ryan’s _brain_ cross, but Shane doesn’t leave him in suspense for long.

Shane leans in, wrapping his arm around Sara’s waist from behind. He eases his hand down and into her panties, sliding a finger or two between her folds to test how wet she is, smiling when he must like what he finds. Sara wriggles, relieved to finally be touched.

Under her Ryan goes stock-still and breathless, aware of Shane’s hand so very close.

After a few passes, teasing, playing with her clit, Shane pulls his hand back out. His pointer and middle fingers are shiny and wet. “Hey Ryan, I think she likes you,” he says, and then after a moment’s consideration he offers them to Ryan.

Ryan can’t think about it. He doesn’t want to think. He closes his eyes and sucks Shane’s fingers into his mouth, tasting Sara on him, licking them clean.

It’s not so bad. He likes the way it makes Sara utter an aghast little “_Ryan,” _like she can’t believe it. He likes her taste, proof that she wants him. He even likes how patient Shane is, how un-pushy, because fingers like that could be a weapon.

_That’ll show them_, Ryan thinks. He can be just as sexy and chill and casual as anyone else. He can be fun.

When he opens his eyes again, Shane’s looking at him thoughtfully. “Too far?” he asks, checking in, and Ryan shrugs.

“No,” he says, and he feels a jolt of triumph when Shane waggles an eyebrow at him, making like he’s impressed.

Sara spins around on his lap so she’s facing out, facing Shane. She hooks her legs over Ryan’s knees, opening her thighs wide. Ryan thinks he’d like to fuck her like this, so Shane can watch. So he can see everything.

As if his thoughts are tracking along with Ryan’s, Shane reaches out to help pull Sara’s underwear down, tossing it to the side to join her shorts. Ryan can’t help himself any longer; he traces his hand down her breasts, her stomach, and between her legs where she’s so hot and wet he could die when he feels her.

She shudders and bucks when he gets the pad of his finger on her clit and rubs in a neat little circle.

“Let me see her, Ryan,” Shane says, grinning up at him conspiratorially.

“You see her all the time,” Ryan pretends to grouse, but he spreads her legs wide again for Shane to look, fingers splaying her open, all that pink wetness just for them. The lewdness of it sends a rumble of need up his back, makes her arch against him.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Shane tells her, leaning in to press a kiss to the inside of her knee where it’s hooked over Ryan’s, keeping her open.

“You’re both gross,” Sara says, “men are _gross_,” and Ryan hears the blush in it although he can’t see it. He can also feel the way she’s shifting against him, knowing that however embarrassed she is, her want is greater, and he stills the rub of his finger to tease her into admitting it. Sure enough: “Okay, well, I didn’t say _stop_.”

Ryan eases two fingers inside her in one smooth motion. He’s sure she’s wet enough to handle it, and she is—although not so wet he can’t feel her clench around him and imagine how good it would feel on his cock.

Shane leans in then to get down to business for real, licking her clit where Ryan’s fingers were a moment earlier. It takes them a minute to find the rhythm, but then it clicks into place, the thrill of teamwork, as easy as Sara predicted it would be for them: Ryan’s fingers inside her, putting pressure on all the right spots, giving her something to feel full around. Shane’s mouth on her clit, and then licking down and around the base of Ryan’s fingers and back up.

Ryan’s eyes flick to Shane’s when he feels the wet heat of Shane’s tongue against his knuckles, against Sara’s opening. He’s shocked by the intimacy of it.

He can’t help but imagine how good that would feel, to be fucking Sara, buried to the hilt inside her, and to have Shane’s mouth on them both, there at the spot where they meet. He can’t know if Shane’s thinking it too, but the moment they make eye contact, the moment he looks down further still to see Shane’s hand down his own unbuttoned pants, Ryan knows he’s about to come in his shorts and there isn’t a damn thing he can do to stop it.

“C’mon, that’s it,” he encourages Sara, again finding the spot inside her that makes her gasp, and Shane redoubles his efforts on her clit. Her whole body is tense, braced right on the edge of coming. They get her there together, and when Ryan feels her clenching tight around his fingers, those telltale arrhythmic flutters, hears her little cry, he feels nothing so much as relief.

He comes with his fingers still inside her, needing nothing but the pressure of her ass against his dick and the slick clenching heat of her so close, and the abstract, treacherous thought of Shane’s mouth, _what if…?_

When Ryan comes back to himself, Sara’s pushing at his wrist, tender and oversensitive, and he pulls himself carefully free of her. He thinks about offering his fingers to Shane, as Shane had done, but now that he’s come he finds he’s too embarrassed. He wipes them on his own shorts instead, reckoning that he’s probably not cool enough to get away with it.

Shane’s still knelt on the floor, head bowed, wiping his mouth with his forearm. He must have brought himself off too, when Ryan was too busy coming to notice, and he feels a little strange about that. Peevishly, he feels as if he’s missed something. It’s like sneaking into the theater just as a movie’s starting and being disappointed to have missed all the previews, even though they were probably not that interesting to begin with.

_I wasn’t here to see that movie anyway_, Ryan reminds himself.

Sara dismounts, reaching down to grab her underwear and pull them on. She doesn’t bother with her shorts. Shane pulls her to him for a kiss, and Ryan finds himself a little unsure of what to do. He feels suddenly superfluous.

Should he go to the bathroom and clean up? Should he leave?

He looks down at his hand, at his hand which was just inside Sara, and snickers in spite of himself.

“What’s up?” Shane asks, and he could be asking about the weather, about Ryan’s plans for later, about some minor mishap with a video.

“My fingers are all pruney,” Ryan says.

“You took a dip in Lake Rubin, and the water’s fine,” Sara says. She disappears down the hallway, reappearing a moment later wrapped in a very fluffy purple bathrobe. She tosses a towel at Ryan. “Feel free to shower. You can borrow some of Shane’s sweats if you want to sleep over.”

Ryan hesitates, and Shane must spot it right away—the gulf between his natural instincts for closeness, _after_, and this newfound confusion. Ordinarily Ryan’s a real cuddler after sex, but he doesn’t know if cuddling’s on the table here, or if he would even want it to be.

“Couch or bed, there’s room either way,” Shane says. “Your call.”

“Yeah, I’ll crash on the couch if it’s okay with you guys.” That’s fine, that’s normal. Ryan’s spent the night on their couch plenty of times after a late night. He’s craving normalcy just now, and space to process it all. Just not too much space.

He slings the towel over his shoulder and makes for the bathroom. Before he hits the hallway he pauses, looking back at them.

“So did I pass the sex audition?” he asks, because he has to know. If the answer’s no, he doesn’t have to be disappointed, he can be fine with that, but he has to prepare.

Shane and Sara exchange a look. Then Shane mimics hitting a pop fly, sending one soaring out to the cheap seats.

“Knocked it outta the park,” he says with a wink that makes something twist in Ryan’s stomach.

“You’re the Simone Biles of making chicks come their brains out,” Sara agrees. “Nine point seven fives across the board. Even the Russian judge agrees.”

“You know I hate when you guys mix your sports metaphors,” Ryan says, and he turns his back on them so they can’t see his grin. “Sometimes I think you do it on purpose just to spite me.”

*

Ryan tentatively plans to get up early and split before either Shane or Sara can wake up, but to his immense surprise he sleeps in much later than usual. He sleeps _hard_, too, waking up stiff and sore from a night of unmoving, dreamless sleep. 

The apartment is quiet. It’s bright in the living room, probably too late in the morning to think about sneaking anywhere. For a moment he thinks he’s alone, and then he hears tinkering noises from the direction of the kitchen.

Shane pops his head around the wall dividing living room from kitchen. “Oh, you’re up. I thought I heard you doing that mumbling thing you do. Coffee?”

Ryan sits up, stretching blearily. He’s crashed on Shane and Sara’s couch a dozen times or more, and never has he woken up like this, adrift, without the first idea of what to do or say. He feels like a stranger in this home.

“Yes please,” he says. Instead of expecting Shane to bring it to him, Ryan forces himself to shuffle into the kitchen to drink it over a counter. It just feels like the kind of day where he might spill coffee all over a thousand-dollar West Elm couch if he isn’t careful.

Shane hands him a cup. “Sara ducked out to grab us breakfast sandwiches from that place around the block that does good ones. She’ll be back any minute.”

Like it was just waiting to be invited, Ryan’s stomach growls loudly at the mention of food. Shane smiles into his own mug, letting the steam from the hot coffee pink up his cheeks and forehead.

He looks quite young like this, Ryan thinks, in the soft light of the morning, hair mussed, in a ratty old tee and sweats that are a little short in the leg.

“How’d you sleep?” Shane asks. He’s not looking at Ryan; his eyes are trained on the door of his fridge, as if he’s very interested in the magnet collection that lives there. He and Sara bring one back from every place they go. Ryan’s lost count of the number of times Shane’s insisted they stop at some truck stop in the middle of nowhere so he can buy a piece of tacky roadside kitsch.

Ryan suspects Shane is gearing up for other, harder questions. “Like the dead, actually. Neck’s a little stiff.”

Shane nods. “And…you’re good? With stuff?”

Ryan gets it again: that feeling that he needs to be good or it says something about him that he doesn’t like. And it’s not that he’s _not_ good, it’s just that the pressure’s there all the same. _Don’t make it weird. It’s not a big deal. It’s not that weird that I was knuckle-deep in your girlfriend last night. It’s not that weird that I almost sort of saw you come._

“Stellar,” he says, and he makes himself give Shane what he hopes is a breezy, devil-may-care sort of smile.

Shane’s frown deepens, which means it didn’t work. He puts his mug down on the counter.

“It’s fine if this isn’t for you, you know,” he says. “There’s nothing inherently better about being, I don’t know, _casual_ about sex. About being flexible or fluid or whatever. It’s not like there’s a right way to be, and if you can’t be like that you’re less evolved, or mature, or whatever it is you seem to be worried about. I don’t think that.”

“Is that what you are? Flexible?” Ryan asks, both to get the heat of Shane’s razor-sharp scrutiny off himself and because he’s deeply curious, and has been since well before Shane brought this whole thing up. It’s only now that he’s put a little investment capital into it that he feels he’s got the right to ask at all.

Shane shrugs. He has his hands out in front of him, palms out, as if he’s subconsciously showing Ryan he has nothing in them. No secrets, no agenda.

“Flexible’s fine, if you had to find a word, although frankly I don’t often feel the need to. Mostly I’m just—I don’t know, Ryan. I don’t worry about it. Life is long. People are interesting and attractive. Sex feels good.”

Ryan feels his face go hot, which is stupid. It’s not like Shane’s calling _him_ interesting and attractive. It’s not like Shane’s saying sex with _him_ would feel good. It’s not like he wants Shane to say those things.

“I’m not _worried_ about it,” he says, which is kind of a lie. “I’m just processing.”

Sara chooses that moment to burst in the front door carrying a large brown paper bag, amazing food smells wafting in with her. “Oh, great, Ryan, you’re up. I brought the goods.”

Ryan looks at her and all he can think is, _the goods_, and then, _oh fuck,_ _I’ve seen you naked_.

She plunks the food on the counter and looks over at him, hands on her hips, bullish. Ryan thinks she’s daring him to say something about it.

“You look nice this morning,” he tells her. And it’s true, she does, her hair pulled into two wild buns, wearing a long hoodie like a dress. He doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to say, but it must not be wrong, judging from the sunny smile she gives him.

“Thank you. It’s because I’m all aglow with satisfaction,” she tells him.

“I’ll just bet you are,” Shane says archly.

“Hush, you,” she says, holding out her hand, making a motion like grabbing. “Plates, okay? We’re not animals.”

Shane sets the table, and Ryan refills their coffee mugs, and they sit down to eat. This is the part Ryan knows how to do, the part that’s entirely un-terrifying. The silence, when it falls, isn’t even that uncomfortable, and Ryan makes himself relax a little. No one is behaving differently, except probably him. Maybe it really, genuinely doesn’t have to be a big deal.

Maybe this is just how people are in this, the Year of Our Lord 2020: very cool, and evolved, and _flexible_.

Ryan must have a weird look on his face, because Shane points at him suddenly. “This! This is what I mean, Ryan. I tried to tell her. I tried to tell Sara you were a commitment guy, Mr. Serial Monogamist, but she didn’t care, she had to have you anyway.”

“I’m not a serial monogamist,” Ryan protests, but they all know it isn’t true. He lives for that shit. When he gets into a new relationship he goes in _hard_ and gets his heart broken even harder, but he can’t help it. He craves the closeness, the intimacy that relationships bring.

“I didn’t say it’s a bad thing. It’s sweet.” Shane laughs when Ryan scowls. “Just, you know. Don’t go with the flow if you don’t genuinely like the flow, is what I’m saying. No one will think less of you.”

“Yeah, Ryan,” Sara says, suddenly serious. “I had a lot of fun last night, obviously, but my feelings won’t be hurt if what we talked about isn’t on the table.”

“I never said I didn’t like the flow,” Ryan says. He feels like he must have a giant blinking neon sign on his head that reads VANILLA in all capital letters.

“I’m reminded of a time,” Shane starts, and then he snickers and shakes his head. “You won’t remember. We were out for Jen’s 25th, a bunch of us. You got drunk as a skunk. We got around to talking about sex, or relationships, I don’t even remember, it was weird. Anyway, you leaned in to me and you said, super-earnestly, ‘Sex is just about _connection_, man. It’s about your _heart_ coming, not just your dick.’”

“I did not say that.”

“You did. And then you drooled on my shoulder in the Uber.”

“I think it’s beautiful,” Sara says lightly, and her foot finds Ryan’s ankle under the table and slides reassuringly along the top of his foot. “A beautiful sentiment.”

“You looked like you were gonna cry,” Shane says. “Like, big fat feelings tears. Anyway. I’m just saying that it’s not like I’m going to be surprised or offended if someone who feels that way about sex doesn’t want to casually insert himself into his friends’—”

“Orifices?”

“I was going to say _relationships_, thank you, Sara.”

Ryan looks back and forth between them, the way they’re trading off like a comedy routine, like Abbott and Costello doing “Who’s on First?” He feels _handled_.

“Did you guys rehearse this? Was this planned? Because you said I passed the sex audition, but now it feels a little like you’re trying to fire me. And you’re really bad at it.” 

Sara’s face falls. She reaches out to get a hand on his wrist. “God, Ryan, no. You’re still my first choice. Last night was…it was so good, really, I can’t even begin to tell you. It’s just that,” and then she looks to Shane for help.

“It’s just that there are a lot of outcomes here we’re cool with,” Shane says, “but you regretting something isn’t one of them.”

Ryan thinks there’s quite a large gulf between the care Shane is showing in this conversation and the way he bumbled his way through issuing the invitation in the first place, all those weeks ago. He wonders what changed for them between then and now.

“How about you let me decide what I can handle?” Ryan says. “I’m not some naïve little flower you’re peer-pressuring into sex, you know. I’ve done things.”

Shane crosses his arms over his chest. “Name one thing you’ve done.”

“I’ve,” and Ryan thinks about it good and hard while he finishes the last bite of his sandwich. “Things, okay. You wanna see my resume or what? Call my sex references?” 

“Do you _have_ sex references?” Sara asks, curious.

Ryan thinks about that too. He’s had plenty of sex, thanks. There are plenty of women who would vouch for him, plenty of ex-girlfriends he treated right. But for this?

“Shut up,” he says. When Shane grins at him, letting it drop, Ryan lets himself grin back.

*

Ryan doesn’t know what will happen after that. He sort of thinks that maybe one night they’ll get a little drunk, he’ll get a little brave, and they’ll fall into bed and finish what they started.

Instead, they fall into business.

Watcher Entertainment goes from an idea in the back of their minds to a reality—a reality with a budget and a creative direction and actual employees—in the blink of an eye. One day they’re brainstorming in Ryan’s kitchen, and the next they have to film actual shows on an almost impossibly demanding schedule.

In the span of three months, they film a season of Unsolved and film and edit episodes of the shows they want to unveil for Watcher. They pitch, they take meetings, they agonize over paperwork. They redo the paperwork when it turns out they fucked it up the first time. Ryan’s sure that when he looks back on this time in his life it’ll be a blur, all the anxiety and panic and excitement and exhaustion smoothing together into one indistinct stomach knot of _too much_.

He doesn’t have time for sex, doesn’t even have the mental headspace to want it. Any spare moment he spends in a bed, he wants to be sleeping, and the dark circles under Shane’s eyes and his permanent politely frazzled expression suggest he feels the same.

Sara, patient as a saint, pours herself into her art and her work. She packs Shane extra-big lunches to make sure Ryan eats too, and if she’s eager to get this show on the road she doesn’t so much as hint at it.

Finally Ryan just decides that it probably won’t ever happen, and he can live with that. Does he think about it sometimes, in his bed at night, in the shower, when he needs to blow off some steam? Sure. He wonders about the noises Sara might make, pressed between them as they fill her up. He wonders if Shane would touch him. He wonders if he would _want_ Shane to touch him.

But if, as is starting to appear likely, he only has room in his life for either Watcher or that—well. On balance, he’ll stick with what he has, and loves, and cannot now bear to lose.

*

They launch Watcher on a Friday in January, and Ryan gets fresh air into his lungs for what feels like the first time since September. At last there’s space in his head, just a small slice of it, for something else. He feels like Punxsutawney Phil emerging from his little groundhog den to check if there’ll be six more weeks of winter or if spring is just around the corner.

The first episode is up, Puppet History, one of Shane’s. The reactions so far seem positive, judging from the way their brand-spanking-new Discord is losing its collective mind, and Shane looks bowled over with the relief of it. He keeps wandering around their small half-unpacked office like he doesn’t know what to say, where to sit, what to do with his hands, and Ryan’s enjoying this unprecedented look at Shane flustered.

“Calm down, man.” Ryan relishes the opportunity to be the one to tell Shane, for perhaps the first time in the history of their friendship, to chill out. “You did it. It’s real.”

“We did it,” Shane says. He looks queasy, and Ryan holds out the giant container of cheese balls in commiseration.

“You should eat something,” Ryan says, knowing full well that Shane has barely eaten all day. “You’ll feel better.”

Shane flaps a hand at him. “I’ll have pizza when it gets here.”

They’re having a launch party tonight at the office, just the small Watcher staff and some friends and loved ones. Sara’s coming. Ryan’s mom is stopping by. For the first time in a while, Ryan feels primarily relief and excitement and pride rather than a growing sense of dread.

Sara brings the pizza with her, a pile of boxes so high she can only just see over them.

“There are only supposed to be like fifteen people here, Sara,” Shane says, about to grumble about the unnecessary expense, but Sara cuts him off.

“This is on me,” she says. “Well, technically it’s on Buzzfeed, I used my corporate card. Don’t tell.”

Shane pulls her close and leans down to drop a grateful kiss on her cheek. “I’m touched that you’ve committed light fraud in our honor.”

“I just want my boys to eat,” she says, and Ryan feels his insides go liquid and warm, as if he’s swallowed a mouthful of the most wholesome soup. He’s not sure if it’s witnessing this rare bit of public intimacy between Shane and Sara that’s done it, or the fact that she’s lumped him in as one of _her boys_, but either way he feels a little undone.

Sara gives him an appraising look like she knows it. Ryan’s starting to get the uncomfortable feeling that she knows _everything_.

Once the party gets underway, there’s champagne for toasts. Ryan has a little, not a lot, but it’s enough to go to his head, to make him feel fizzy and restless. Shane has enough that he can relax, eat something, and stop looking up at the Professor puppet on his cabinet perch every ten seconds like he’s checking that the little guy’s still there, that it’s _real_.

Time comes in fits and starts. Ryan looks at the clock and it’s 7 pm—it’s 8:30—9:00. He’s sitting on the little grey couch next to Sara when Shane snaps a picture of them on his phone, probably memorialized forever as a bleary-eyed emotional wreck.

“What’s up?” Sara asks Shane, and he shrugs.

“Just wanted to remember,” he says. “Wanted a picture of my two favorite people on this night.”

“You’re going sentimental in your old age,” she says, but she smiles big and bright anyway. She shifts her whole body onto the couch, settling her socked feet into Ryan’s lap—she’s got an almost phobic dislike for wearing shoes indoors, Sara—with a comfortable sigh.

Ryan lets his hand settle on the slim turn of her ankle, right on the prominent bone. The thumb of his other hand fits into the arch of her foot to rub absent-mindedly, and Sara lets out a little groan of pleasure.

“Oh, that’s the stuff,” she says. Shane watches them, phone down now, interested.

“I’m pretty tired,” he says after a moment, and then there’s a long pause. “But I’m not the _most_ tired.”

“Oh, you’re not,” Sara says, like she isn’t really paying attention. Then she sits up fast, nearly pulling her foot out of Ryan’s grasp. “Oh you’re _not_.”

“Rain check, I am not fit for the bars tonight,” Ryan says. “And anyway, they always say you shouldn’t follow lunatics to a second location.”

Shane and Sara exchange a look Ryan can’t decode. Maybe his brain’s just too fried from the last few months, or maybe they’ll always have little couple things he doesn’t understand, doesn’t get to be a part of.

“No, Ryan,” Sara says, her voice very low so no one nearby can hear. “Shane’s saying—like. Do you want to maybe come back to our place?”

Even as emotionally blitzed as he is, as thoroughly wrung out and hung up to dry, Ryan doesn’t miss the implication the second time around.

He probably isn’t in a state of mind to be making important decisions right now. He’s not drunk, exactly, but he’s definitely drunk on the success of the launch, high on the thrill of finally showing the world what they’ve spent the better part of half a year working on. He’s emotionally compromised, feeling particularly close to these two people tonight, particularly desirous of their respect and affection.

All Ryan can say, though, is, “But my _mom’s_ here.”

And she is. She’s over in the corner talking to Steven, showing him the puppet she has of Ryan’s dad for reasons that remain uneasily unclear to Ryan even now. Ryan feels very embarrassed to be talking about these things, or even talking _around_ them, when he can hear her laughing ten feet away.

Shane grins. “We can wait until your mom leaves.”

The other part of Ryan, possibly the bigger part, feels like this is the _exact_ night to take a chance—riding on the back of that other chance they took, the one that’s looking more and more like it’s going to pay off. Maybe they’re on a roll.

There’s something satisfying in that, something about the symbolic tidiness of the timing. Maybe they should pop the cork on this, like they did on the champagne, and let it pour all over the floor, and drink their fill. Maybe they all deserve this.

“Okay,” Ryan says. “I’d like that.”

Sara kicks her feet, giddy, pulling them out of Ryan’s grasp. She looks around. “We should make our excuses and go. Got to get ready, you know,” and she waggles her eyebrows. Ryan doesn’t know, not really, but he will certainly give himself over to wild speculation for the next hour or so of his life. “Shane, start telling everyone how tired you are. Yawn a lot. Let’s wrap this sucker up.”

“Geez, eager much?” Shane asks, but he laughs and rubs his hands together.

“The last time I tried anything you told me—and I’m quoting here—_not where the Professor can see_. And then you disappeared into our closet to record VO for three hours. I love you, I love this company, but I’m going up the walls here.”

Ryan snickers, but he can’t blame her. He hasn’t gotten laid in months, not since the last time they—not since the last time. And even that, delicious as it had been, hadn’t been enough for him, as much as he wanted. The stress and the fear and the complete lack of free time had pushed it to the back of his mind, but now he’s already half-hard in his pants with anticipation.

“You guys go,” he says. “I’ll follow you when I can.”

Shane hesitates. Then he opens his mouth to argue, as if he thinks if they leave Ryan here Ryan will talk himself out of following. That’s probably a fair concern, because it does sound like something Ryan would do.

“My _mom_ is _here_. I’m not leaving with you. She saw my car in the parking lot, she knows I drove here.”

“Fair enough,” Shane says. “But if you’re more than an hour we’re getting started without you.”

“An hour,” Ryan promises. Sara kisses him on the cheek, squeezes his hand, and starts making the rounds to say their goodbyes.

Shane hangs back for a moment, hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like he’s got something more to say but can’t find the words for it. It’s making Ryan anxious just watching him, wondering what it might be, and he lets them both off the hook. After all, having big serious conversations just isn’t their way.

“I really love your show,” he says. “I’m glad other people do too.”

Shane smiles then, genuine and lovely, all the way to the downturned corners of his eyes.

“Thank you. See you soon, okay?”

Ryan thinks he could tell Shane a million times, in a million different ways, that he’ll be there, and Shane still wouldn’t really believe him.

*

Ryan parks at their apartment complex exactly one hour and ten minutes later. He could probably have gotten away sooner, but honestly he’d wanted to see if Shane was bullshitting him about getting started without him.

He finds their door unlocked, and then he finds that Shane wasn’t bullshitting.

Shane and Sara aren’t in their living room or their kitchen. Ryan’s about to call out for one of them when he hears a little noise down the hallway, the murmur of indistinct voices through a couple of thin walls.

Their bedroom door is cracked, and he pushes it open, and what he sees blows his mind wide open.

Sara is naked on their big bed, completely naked, not a stitch on her. She’s on her forearms and knees, legs spread for Shane to kneel behind her. He’s fiddling with a toy in her ass, some kind of plug, tugging at it without firm intention, eating her out from behind to make her whine and push back.

Seeing it is shocking, the same way jumping into a freezing cold pool without bothering to dip your toe in first is shocking. Ryan gets hard so fast it’s unnatural and probably unhealthy, and the dizziness makes him lean against the doorframe. He can actually _feel_ his blood buzzing in his body. He touches his hand to his nose, checking for a nosebleed.

“What the fuck, you guys,” he says, and his voice comes out embarrassingly ragged. “I was only like ten minutes late.”

They both look up at him. Sara smiles, not surprised to see him, arching her back like the hottest greeting he’s ever received. Shane sits back on his heels like he _is_ surprised, like he’d been so sure Ryan wasn’t coming, and he feels a crunch of guilt for making them wait.

“You were warned,” Sara says. “Anyway, I told you I had to get myself ready.”

Ryan gesticulates at Shane, as if to say, _and him_?

“I’m helping,” Shane says simply. He pulls the plug out an inch or two, making Sara inhale sharply at the thickness of it, and Ryan is having a lot of trouble figuring out where to look. “It can be quite a process.”

“I know that,” Ryan says. “I’ve—helped before.”

Shane raises his eyebrows. “Well, get in here and help me help, then.”

Sara makes a little noise as he twists the plug. “One of you menaces messing around back there is more than enough. Ryan can help by dropping trou, please and thank you.”

“I thought the whole point of this exercise was that I _wasn’t_ more than enough,” Shane starts, but he trails off and fails to finish the joke as Ryan tugs his shirt off and tosses it to the side.

Ryan’s self-conscious about a lot of things, but his body isn’t one of them. He goes for the button of his jeans next, pulling them and his briefs off together because there’s really no point in hesitating, no time for shyness. He’s got some catching up to do.

Sara makes a little _mmm_ of appreciation, going up on her elbows to look at him.

“Oh goodness,” she says. “Shane.”

Ryan thinks Shane’s done something to her, something she likes, but when he looks up they’re both staring unabashedly at him. The toy’s temporarily set aside—or still _in_ her, maybe, Ryan doesn’t know, Jesus—and Sara’s turned on her side now, Shane stroking her hip as they look their fill.

He could show off for her, flex, maybe, but it feels insincere, so instead he just stands there and lets them both look. He’s painfully aware of the hardness of his dick, arcing up towards his belly, and while he knows he’s got nothing to be ashamed of he still feels very observed.

“Very nice,” Shane says mildly. Humiliatingly, Ryan’s dick gives a little twitch of approval at his words. Shane glances away, his face pink, and Ryan feels—annoyed, maybe. He’s annoyed at his body for reacting to even the most subdued of praise, and he’s annoyed at Shane for looking away like he thinks Ryan needs him to.

He’s just so controlled, so careful. Ryan wonders what it would be like, were that control to snap. Because he is himself, he wants to push.

“Well?” he asks, his voice arch. He reaches down to stroke himself once, twice, pulling his dick flush against his belly to show off. Sara sighs happily. Shane just blinks. “Someone in this room’s overdressed.”

Shane’s still in his boxers. Ryan feels like it’s only fair that if he’s gonna be naked, everyone’s gonna be naked. Besides, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious, given what he’s glimpsed or guessed over the last several years of traveling together. It’s not like he’s _thought_ about it, but.

“If—if you want,” Shane starts, and then he looks at Sara. Sara raises one hand in the air.

“I want!” she chirps.

Ryan shrugs. He half-raises his hand, feeling like the kid in class who thinks he knows the answer but still isn’t sure he’s ready to be called on. “I mean. It’s only fair.”

Shane hesitates, hands on the waistband of his boxers. “I just—”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to run out of here screaming, dude. It’s not like I don’t know you’ve got a dick.”

Sara giggles. “Despite your best efforts, he figured you out.”

Shane looks at him then, scrutinizing him like he’s picked up on the hurt there. Ryan’s just very tired of being tiptoed around like he can’t be trusted to make his own decisions. He would never have agreed to this in the first place if the thought of Shane naked repelled him, and Ryan doesn’t know how to make him understand it.

Shane pulls his boxers off and tosses them clear of the bed, to join the little pile of clothes—first Sara’s, and then Ryan’s—on the floor. And—huh.

Ryan had known he had a dick, of course. Ryan had not, perhaps, known how _much_ dick.

“Oh,” he says, and his voice comes out high-pitched and strange, making Sara snicker. “Okay.”

*

“Oh, okay,” Ryan says, sounding like he’s just sucked on a balloon full of helium, and Sara has to bite her lip to stop from losing her shit laughing.

“Shut up,” Shane says. Sara looks back at him, over her shoulder, and his face is so red that she’s compelled to kiss him on both cheeks.

“The fuck is she supposed to do with that?” Ryan asks, gesticulating from Shane to Sara and back again.

Sara’s been managing just fine for the last four years of her life, thank you _very_ much, although of course it’s not without occasional limitations.

“You do know where babies come from, right, Ryan?” she asks. “Babies weigh, like, eight pounds.”

God, she wants to tease him, but more than that she wants to _touch_ him. He’s still halfway across the room, like he’s too nervous to come closer, and between the plug inside her and Shane’s fingers stroking across her hip and belly and thigh she’s turned on to the point of distraction. She wants to get her hands around his biceps. She wants to kiss him again, and see if her memory holds up.

“Yeah, but like,” and he’s still staring at Shane’s dick like it could stare back, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Fair enough.” That’s a gauntlet thrown if she’s ever heard one.

Sara nudges Shane up the bed a little, though his ankles and feet still hang over the edge. In one motion she tosses her leg over Shane’s hips to sit astride him, lowering herself down on his cock. She does have to go gentle, even as turned on as she is, but she’s eventually able to take him all, settling herself on his thighs with a satisfied groan and a wiggle of her hips that makes Shane clutch at her waist.

“God, Sar, warn a guy,” he mutters. It was a little showy, maybe, but she can’t help it. She wants to show off. She wants to show _him_ off, too, for Ryan.

She starts to rock, keen to give Ryan the best view she can. Where he’s standing, behind her and off to the right, he must be able to see every inch of Shane disappearing into her as she rides him, able to see how wet she is for the both of them. When she arches her back she knows he can see the plug too, a placeholder for what’s to come.

“Holy shit,” Ryan says under his breath. He moves a little closer, shutting the door behind him, as if he has only now made his final determination to stay. “Holy fucking shit. Jesus, you must feel so—much. Shane—is it?—”

Shane looks up at her then, and she tousles a little of his hair out of his eyes, _answer him_. As she does it she clenches her muscles around him, delighting when he bucks up into her with a soft curse.

Sara can’t come like this, no one touching her clit, but she can get pretty damn close. She intends to.

“Unbelievably tight, you can’t imagine,” Shane says, his voice low and controlled. He thrusts up with intention this time, no longer content to lie there and take it, making her gasp. “Wet, and so—I mean, the plug.”

“Can you feel it?”

Ryan’s still got a hand on himself, squeezing slow and steady like he can’t help it, just like he can’t help but ask.

“Yeah,” Shane says. “It’s just pressure right now. But if you—if someone moved it, I’d feel it.”

Ryan moves then for real, like he can’t help it, like his curiosity or his desire has finally gotten the better of any vestigial misgivings. He sits on the edge of the bed so he can get his fingers around the base of the plug, still wet with lube from their prep.

They’d taken a shower together, her and Shane, as soon as they got home. He’d talked over the patter of the shower about how good she and Ryan had looked together the last time, how beautifully she’d taken his fingers, how beautifully she’d take his dick. He’d said things it was hard for him to say in the quiet of their room, even when just the two of them.

They’d waited as long as they could, but at exactly the one-hour mark Shane had carried her into the bedroom to open her up with his fingers and then the plug. They don’t do anal often, for obvious reasons, but she’s got a little stash of toys for when she needs it.

Now Ryan’s hand slides away from the plug and down, close to where Shane’s fit inside her. Close, but not touching. He gently cups her with his spread thumb and pointer finger, applying gentle pressure so she’s even tighter around Shane, playing at what he clearly considers to be a safe distance.

She can feel his fascination warring with his hesitance, and she looks down to Shane for his read on it. He waggles his eyebrows back at her. Ryan’s hand flits back up to the plug, tracing around it where she’s stretched.

“Can I?” Ryan asks, gripping the flared base of the plug so cautiously.

“Go nuts,” Sara says. God, she wants to come so bad. It must show on her face, because Shane scoots her up and back a little so she can fit her hand between them to touch her clit. When she finally does, she clenches again with the relief of it, creating a feedback loop that makes Shane exhale with a hot punch of air that ruffles her hair.

Ryan pulls the plug out, slow but not too slow—just right. He teases her with the tip of it, pushing it in a little before pulling back again, loosening her even more. He’s done this before, as he’d said. Not to brag, but Sara really does have excellent instincts.

Then he eases it in almost all the way, stretching her around the thickest part of it, wiggling it by the base. He presses it in, moving in little circles, designed to be gentle but _felt_. Sara can’t see him, but she’s sure he’s looking at Shane, seeking a reaction, just like always. She’s absolutely sure of it.

He’s going to get one, too. Sara’s so full, so overwhelmed. She shudders to feel it move inside her, knowing Shane feels it too.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ryan,” Shane says. He’s looking over Sara’s shoulder, and she wishes she could see whatever’s passing between them. Whatever it is, it’s got Shane wild-eyed the way he almost never gets.

“Yeah?” Ryan asks, curious. He does it again, out, and then that deliberate press in. Sara feels Shane twitch and swell inside her, impossibly hard.

She groans and Shane groans with her, and Ryan sucks in air like keeping himself upright is becoming a hardship.

Sara feels like pure energy translated into pure sensation. She’s the source of it and the hub of it and the conduit for it, all at once. She can feel it building inside her with her orgasm until she’s pushing it out to Shane and Ryan too, enveloping all of them in a cloud of it. She feels _powerful_ with it, drunk on the power of connection.

Being with the two of them like this—feeling them want her and want each other, not knowing what to do with that wanting—is like connecting two hot wires and taking the sparks inside herself. She wants to both contain it and to share it.

“I wonder if this is how Storm feels,” she says, and then she comes so hard and so suddenly that it takes even her by surprise. She bears down on Shane with a cry, clutching at his shoulders, at his chest, pressing her hands to his ribs. Behind her she’s dimly aware of Ryan’s hand, the one not opening her up with the plug, stroking down her back.

“Storm? Like from the X-Men?” Shane asks as she comes down. He reaches up to wipe at her cheek, and then she realizes there’s a stray tear there, produced not by emotion but by the sheer physical rush.

“Do you know what happens to a toad when it’s struck by lightning?” she starts to joke weakly, but Shane kisses her deep before she can finish the terrible line.

“Not to interrupt a very tender moment,” and Ryan starts strong but he finishes at a babble, “but can I—fuck, please, can—Sara?”

As much as Sara wants him inside her right this moment, wants them both, she’s not sure she can manage it right now without blowing up the whole house. All that energy’s still coiling inside her.

“Come up here,” she tells him. “I want you in my mouth. Wanna see your stupid face for once.”

*

Ryan doesn’t have to be asked twice.

It surprises him how much he likes to watch them together, how satisfying it is. He’d expected them to be awkward—the height difference, the way Shane lumbers through the world—but in fact they are lovely together. Their years spent learning to navigate each other’s bodies have given them a deliberate, learned sort of grace that makes something in Ryan flare bright with envy.

If all he was allowed to do was watch, it might be enough. But knowing he is invited to touch, to find out how he might fit into this puzzle, makes him impatient.

He scrambles up toward the head of the bed to kneel where the pillows would be, if they hadn’t thrown those to the floor ages ago. Ryan’s got his hand circled around the base of his cock, not a little unconcerned that it’s going to all be too much for him.

After they settle, Shane starts to move again inside her, slower now, easier. She can’t really ride him and multitask, but she can brace herself for him to take, let him fuck up into the heat of her. It looks beautiful. It looks like it feels fucking great.

Then Sara leans over to take Ryan in her mouth, and he forgets to be jealous.

“Sara,” he breathes out, his hand going out immediately to cup her cheek. He’s always been tactile this way, whenever a woman’s done this for him. He just wants to touch her, to be close to her. He wants to run his thumb along the softness of her lower lip, where it’s closed around his cock.

She’s good at it, slow, teasing the way he likes. She takes him deep and she makes it look easy, and when she’s halfway down she peeks up at him from under her eyelashes, making him groan and fight the urge to press deeper.

“Wow,” Shane says. “Wow, guys.”

He sounds like he’s enjoying the view from his front row seat. Ryan glances down and flushes to realize just how close Shane is, his head tipped sideways to watch Sara’s mouth work along Ryan’s length.

His eyes are bright and attentive, crinkled charmingly at the corners with his smile, and Ryan’s taken aback by an unexpected surge of tenderness not unlike the one he’d felt when Sara had put her mouth on him. Before he can talk himself out of it, he reaches down with his other hand to trace Shane’s jawline, and then up to brush that stubborn piece of hair out of his eyes.

“Your hair’s too long,” Ryan tells him.

“I’ll cut it,” Shane says, folding on this easier than he’s ever given in to anything as long as Ryan’s known him. “Whatever you want. Ryan—”

“Yeah?” Ryan asks. Sara pulls off, gets a hand around him so she can lick around the head in tiny, teasing flicks of her tongue.

He wants—he wants—what does he want?

“Ryan, can I—” Shane starts. He reaches out with a hand that had been on Sara’s waist and puts it on Ryan’s leg, asking without asking. He’s got absolutely _huge_ hands, Ryan thinks as he stares at the broadness of it, taking in the way his fingers are spread to span the whole width of his thigh.

He needs to know—needs it suddenly, overwhelmingly, needs it like he needs _air_—what that hand would feel like on him. If this is a pivotal moment, a transitional moment, a point where his life is different in the _after_ than in the _before_, it doesn’t feel that way. It just feels like what he wants.

Ryan remembers, not for the first time, Shane telling him, “People are attractive. Sex feels good.”

Fuck, it’s so annoying when Shane’s right.

“Yeah,” Ryan says again. When Shane’s hand twitches on his leg, uncertain, Ryan adds, “please, you can,” and for once in his life the wanting is so simple and uncomplicated he doesn’t even bother to second-guess it. He’s not sure if this was what anybody meant by _going with the flow,_ but nevertheless he is going with it.

Shane gives a little nod. Then his hand is sliding up to nudge at Ryan’s balls, rolling them around in his hand, encompassing so _much_ of him. With the ring of his thumb and pointer finger he supports Ryan’s cock at the base, holding it steady for Sara.

And he is still so very careful, so tightly-wound, ready to snap. Ryan thinks he’s tantalizingly close to finding out what losing control looks like for Shane. He hopes he does.

That hope informs what he does next, which is wrap one of his own hands around Shane’s on his cock and touch Shane’s chin with the other, just getting his attention. He sinks down and angles his body lower, so he’s right at the level of Shane’s mouth, and he lets Shane decide what to do about it.

The whole room takes a beat. Ryan can feel them, Sara and Shane both, processing the new terms of this thing they are doing together.

With no more hesitation, Shane slides his mouth along the side of Ryan’s cock. He mouths at the head where it’s sensitive, running his tongue back up and over the tip to get at the drop of pre-come beading there.

“Ah, fuck,” Ryan says, and Shane’s eyes snap up to meet his as he sucks the whole tip into his mouth. It’s not just that it feels good, although it does. It’s that it’s _Shane_, and Ryan never thought, not once in the whole time they’ve known each other—he just never _thought_, and it knocks him breathless.

With his right arm, Shane hooks Sara around her back. He pulls her down, giggling, until she’s flush against his chest. He tugs her in close so she can get her mouth on Ryan again too, the two of them all over him with lips and tongues and (Shane) a stray graze of teeth.

Shane tucks his head down to take Ryan’s balls in his mouth, one and then the other. He’s confident about it, sloppy enough to get Ryan wet along with his own mouth and chin, and it has the same effect on Ryan that it always does: getting him dangerously close, dangerously quickly.

He’s never had the attention of two people before, not like this. He’s overwhelmed by it, by the newness of it, the surprise. Looking at Sara and wanting her is nothing new, and he could have kept it locked down forever if he’d needed to, if she’d remained off-limits. But looking at Shane, at his wild-messy hair, at his mouth, so red where it’s wrapped around Ryan’s dick, sends a stab of desire through him that’s so sharp and fresh he almost can’t stand it.

Ryan wonders how long he’s been keeping _that_ one locked down, so beyond off-limits he didn’t even realize it was there.

He can feel himself shaking. He could come like this, easily, between their mouths. He can see it in his head, how good it would feel. How good they would look licking and mouthing him through the pulses of it, kissing each other with his come on their lips.

But of course they have a very specific goal for tonight, and Ryan doesn’t want to ruin it.

“You have to stop,” he says reluctantly. “If you don’t stop I’m gonna come.”

Shane looks up at him again, defiant. “So what?” he asks, but Sara gives him a nudge in the ribs.

“So I’ve got plans for that dick,” she says. “Jeez. Sharing is caring, babe.”

“Sorry, is this _not_ sharing?” Shane asks, pulling her close again. He licks around the head of Ryan’s cock and then into her mouth, letting her taste, and Ryan’s got to admit he has a point there.

Still, what the lady wants, the lady gets.

*

Sara assumes she knows how it will feel.

She and Shane have used toys before, for this, so she thinks she has a general idea of what to expect.

And maybe that’s true, in the purely physical sense of it, in the most by-the-book Tab-A-Slot-B, Tab-C Slot-D sort of way. The stretch of it as Ryan pushes inside her, so slowly, so carefully, like he’s terrified she’ll break. The fullness of it, both of them in her, _finally_, nobody moving an inch—sure. She was prepared for that.

Still, Sara’s absolutely demolished by how immediately she wants to cry, or come, or scream, or all three at once. She does not expect to feel them both quivering under her and above her and inside her, and she does not expect for that to make her shake too. They’re like an old car, something classic and beautifully impractical, rattling apart together as the engine warms up.

She feels intensely vulnerable, open for them, entirely at their mercy and that of the universe. She’s swamped with how safe she feels, by how much she trusts them to love her. Those are the things that surprise her, more than the sensations.

“Are you okay?” Ryan is saying, and he’s blabbering a little, “Sara, is it okay, are you—Shane, is she—?”

“Everybody’s okay,” Shane rumbles, and he catches Sara’s eye to be sure. She understands, then, what it is he hasn’t told her.

His face is open, wide open for her, his eyes clear, and she sees it. She understands why Shane was so reluctant to ask Ryan in the first place. She sees why he was so insistent that Ryan understand, that he be given every opportunity to back out. All the business Shane gave her about how Ryan was built for monogamy, was straight, wasn’t going to be down for casual sex—whatever. She gets it.

She’d thought he’d been worried for Ryan, for Unsolved and then for the business, and it was making him over-cautious. But that wasn’t it at all.

Shane had been worried for _Shane_.

Shane had been worried that when the chips were down, in a moment just like this one, he would want too much, and he wouldn’t be able to hide it.

And he was right to think that, because he _isn’t_ hiding it. She can feel him bursting at the seams with it, and if Ryan looked down now, over her shoulder—and maybe he is—he’d see it too. Then there could be no more posturing, and no more talking around it, and no more deflecting.

She leans down to kiss her boyfriend, to tell him it’s alright. Shane leans up into it eagerly, biting her lip. Desperate, or else desperately relieved.

“_Is_ everybody good?” Sara asks when she comes back up for air. She wiggles a little, getting her bearings, finding out what she’s working with. She gets two delicious noises for her trouble, a hiss from Ryan, a surprised sort of gurgle from Shane, and feels very accomplished.

“This’ll be short and sweet, I think,” Shane says, and he makes an apologetic face at her.

That’s fine with her, honestly. It’s already overwhelming and nobody’s even moved yet. It’s already so much.

“God, I’ve gotta—” Ryan starts, and instead of finishing the thought he inches out, so very slow, and then presses back into her. “Holy fuck, I can feel you,” he says, his voice shocked, and Sara can’t think clearly enough to tell if he’s talking to her or to Shane.

“Yeah,” Shane says, his voice tight, and then he’s moving too, in minute little thrusts. Then the energy coils inside her again, snakes writhing together in the pit of her stomach, and Sara can’t think at all.

*

Ryan doesn’t have any idea how it will feel.

He’s done anal—not a lot, but he’s done it—so he knows it will be tight, thrilling in that forbidden fruit kind of way that kind of makes him feel vaguely guilty even as it turns him on. And it’s scary, too, because he knows every move he makes has to be the right move. There’s no room for error, and that’s terrifying.

But he’s not ready for how _impossibly_ tight it feels, with Shane inside her too. He’s not prepared for the way he can feel Shane moving, even through the condom, through the thin membranes inside of her. He’s shocked by the feeling of being surrounded on all sides by heat and almost too much pressure.

“Holy fuck, I can feel you,” he says to Shane, because he’s so shocked by it, by the unfamiliarity of the feeling of being pressed against someone _inside_ someone.

“Yeah,” Shane grits out, and then he moves, and Ryan feels that too: the insistent, methodical slide of him against his own length.

“Oh,” Sara gasps, “oh _god_.” Ryan can’t even imagine what this must be like for _her_, if he can barely handle it.

For what he’s pretty sure is the first time in his life, Ryan seriously considers what it would be like to get fucked. Sara’s making noises like he’s never heard, like it’s essential.

The closeness of it, the intimacy, the trust. Here, from his courtside seat, Ryan wonders.

Shane’s got more range of motion from his position and he makes use of it, giving Sara long, deep strokes at a steady pace. Ryan stays mostly still, but it doesn’t matter; he could eventually come like this, Shane moving like this against him, somehow catching on his most sensitive places even without direct touch. Sara tight and fluttering around him, around them both.

“I warned you,” Shane says, his voice all caught up in his throat, tense like Ryan’s never heard him. He catches Ryan’s eye over Sara’s shoulder, and the darkness of his blown-wide pupils makes his eyes impossibly brown. “Sorry, guys, it’s too—I can’t—”

“It’s okay, you can, I want you to,” Sara coos, so softly Ryan can barely hear her. For the first time tonight he feels like he’s intruding, until Sara adds, louder, “Come for Ryan, babe. Let him feel you.”

“_Sar_,” Shane chokes out, sounding agonized. Then he’s coming, deep inside her, and Ryan _can_ feel it, can feel the pulse of him as he fills her up. Ryan twitches his hips, in and out, giving Shane a little something for the road and getting a whispered “_Ry_” for his trouble.

“That’s crazy,” Ryan mutters, holding onto Sara’s waist for dear life as Shane pulls out. He won’t soon forget it.

Because he’s got more room to work now, and because his hindbrain is urging him on, completely freed now from the twin burdens of shame and expectation, Ryan pulls Sara’s hips up. He reaches around to rub her clit, and then down to where Shane’s left her open and wet.

The angle isn’t easy but Ryan pushes two fingers inside her to the first knuckle, letting Shane’s come drip out through and around his fingers and onto the sheets. It feels like a waste; he has to see it, has to see _her_, and he pulls out and lifts her up to flip her onto her back.

She goes easy, like she weighs nothing at all, and she shrieks a surprised laugh at the manhandling. Shane rolls away to the side to watch, and he laughs too.

“Knew those arms weren’t for nothing,” he says, “Come on, Ryan, give her the old what-for.”

“_The old what-for_,” Sara gasps as Ryan slides back inside her. It’s easier to move this way, and she’s so relaxed now, and he lets his hips snap loose and easy the way he needs.

He can’t stop playing with her, rubbing her clit, running his fingers through her folds to watch Shane’s come dribble out. He can’t stop working his fingers into her to spread it around. Most of all he can’t stop staring at her face when he does it, her cheeks so pink, the curls going frizzy where she keeps pushing them back from her sweaty forehead. 

“Hey, you’re a real pervert,” Shane says conversationally, watching with keen-eyed interest. “Love that for us.”

“Shut up, Shane,” Sara and Ryan say in unison, and Ryan’s about to laugh when Sara whispers, “Oh, please—”

Ryan’s got his finger on her clit and he knows that tone, he knows it means _do exactly that and if you stop or vary in any way, I’ll kill you_. A woman’s orgasm, once in sight, is not to be trifled with. He keeps the exact rhythm of his thrusts, the exact motion on her clit, and like clockwork Sara convulses around him, bowing in on herself at the knees and the waist.

The sounds she’s making, the uncontrolled grip of her in strong waves, the feel of Shane’s eyes on him—it’s all too much. “Oh fuck, me too,” Ryan says, and he looks down at her and then over at Shane, helpless to do anything but push as deep as he can get and let it crash over him.

As he starts to come, Shane leans in to kiss him, one big hand braced on the side of Ryan’s neck, tongue skating carefully along his own. It is their first kiss. It will not be their last.

*

Later, after condom disposal and clean-up and some much-needed hydration, Sara’s still feeling pretty good about her choices.

Shane and Ryan are weirdly shy around each other, still feeling it out, and that’s fine. She’d known, watching them kiss, that it would all work out eventually. Sara can be patient.

Still, it can’t hurt to poke it along a little.

“You know,” she says, “That was excellent, but I’m not sure it was quite as about me as I thought it would be.”

“Was it not?” Shane asks. “How many more dicks do you want?”

“Greedy,” Ryan agrees.

Sara hums. She stretches out on the bed, pointing her toes, and enjoys watching them both stare at her legs. “What’s that saying,” she says, pretending to ponder, tapping a finger to her chin. “The one about rivers in Egypt?”

“That you shouldn’t swim in them because a hippo will eat you,” Shane says, and she hears the warning in it.

“Or a croc,” Ryan adds.

“Hippos are worse.”

“Nile crocodiles have _sixty-four_ teeth, Shane—”

“I’m not arguing with you about nature’s deadliest animals while we are all but naked,” Shane says with finality.

Privately Sara thinks that if they can’t argue naked, and if they are naked as much as she hopes they will be going forward, they’re going to run out of things to talk about really quickly.

“I’d like to do this again,” Sara says, getting straight to her point. “Maybe not exactly this, always, but…variations on the theme. I open this up to the floor for discussion.”

There’s a deafening silence in the room while they both consider what amount of enthusiasm is correct, what they can say without it being too much. Being a man must be exhausting, she thinks. Yes, the unearned privilege, the higher salary, the _pockets_—but at what cost?

“I’d like that,” Shane says softly, and she’s not surprised that he’s the one to crack first. “I did like it. I liked all of it.”

It’s not everything, but it’s something. She understands his caution. She wants to talk to him privately, before all is said and done, about what he really wants and needs out of this. But for now Ryan is looking at Shane, wary, nervous as all get-out, like it’s not enough for _him_.

“What did you like about it?” Sara presses, smiling brightly when Shane gives her a peevish look. “Specifically.”

“I didn’t know we’d be doing an exit survey,” Shane grouses. “I liked watching you get everything you want. I like watching you feel good, no matter who’s helping you do it. I like watching you come.”

Ryan’s face is already pink again, just thinking about it. His sweaty hair is sticking to his forehead, and Sara reaches out to push it away.

“And?” Sara asks.

“And—Ryan,” Shane says, and he makes himself look at Ryan. Sara thinks that’s brave. “I liked touching you. I’d touch you as much as you’ll let me. I’ll—whatever you want, I’m—I would. Or if you don’t want, that’s fine too, but.”

Ryan flops on his back, tucking his hands behind his head. Sara can’t help but notice he’s at least halfway to hard again already, the bulge his briefs prominent, and she can feel Shane noticing too. Together they carefully avoid eye contact.

“You know what’s weird,” Ryan says, “is that a year ago I would have said no. I’d have—there’d be a Ryan-shaped hole in your front door, no matter what I really wanted.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, agreeing. He’s waiting, with Sara, for the _but_.

“But after you quit your nice, safe job and you go out on a limb—after you take one huge fucking risk—it’s kind of like, what’s one more? Like, what’s the worst that could happen? The meaning of _high_ _stakes_ totally recalibrates.”

Shane opens his mouth, maybe to offer up some ideas about the worst that could happen, but on a look from Sara he shuts it again.

“So…” Sara leads.

“So yeah,” Ryan says. “Count me in. We’ll—let’s just do a whole bunch of sex stuff, I guess. All the stuff. Why not?”

Sara can feel him forcing himself to be deliberately blasé, when in truth he’s anything but. She’ll let him get away with it. She’ll let both of them get away with some things, tonight, until they’re ready. It’s her responsibility, as the only person here with a birds-eye view of the thing, a true sense of the shape of it all, to be gentle with them.

“All the sex stuff, huh,” Shane says. “Even though it’s not _the fun kind_ of threesome?”

He says it very lightly, but Sara can feel it there, just under the skin: some old, scarred-over hurt he’s been holding tightly to himself, as if to minimize the damage it can do to him or anyone else. Ryan can too; he looks sharply over at Shane.

“I was wrong, okay? Sometimes I say things because I don’t—or because I’m scared, or—sometimes I’m just _wrong_. And I say the first stupid shit that pops into my head.”

Shane nods, but Ryan’s not done.

“Are you sure you really want me?” he asks, and now the trace of pain is his. “Despite it being, uh, _ladies’ choice_?”

Sara doesn’t get the reference, but she knows it is one, a callback to some fraught conversation she wasn’t privy to. She knows enough to keep her mouth shut and let them come to this negotiation however they need to.

There will always be things between them that she doesn’t know, just as there will always be things between her and Shane that Ryan can’t know. Maybe someday she and Ryan will have things of their own, too. She’d like that.

“If it was ladies’ choice, it’s only because the lady’s smarter than me,” Shane says. “And less afraid. But you were always my choice too.”

Something passes between them and settles: forgiveness for past carelessness, maybe. Acceptance that this is just going to be kind of hard and awkward for everyone at first, until they figure it out, and maybe that’s fine.

“Can I just say, all this emotional honesty is very sexy of you,” Sara pipes up, trying to lighten the mood again. Shane responds to it at once, pulling her into him, resting his chin on the top of her head to put his nose in her curls and inhale like it’s his one safe place.

Then she smiles, remembering, suddenly, the day they all had. Somehow the sex and then the conversation that followed pushed it out of her mind completely. “Hey. Hey. You guys launched an entire company today.”

“Launched a lot more than that,” Shane says with a snicker, but he’s already rooting around on the nightstand for his phone to check the views on Puppet History like he, too, managed to forget.

“I did read somewhere that fucking your co-CEO and his girlfriend is the best way to succeed in business,” Ryan says. Then a flurry of strange, complicated, and hilarious emotions takes over his face, all in quick succession. “Wow, what a weird thing to say. I—forget I said that.”

“Nope, it’s locked in,” Shane says absently, still scrolling through comments.

“Gonna masturbate about it later,” Sara says, grinning when they both look up at her. Shane’s phone slips from his hand.

She has to laugh at the expressions on their faces, the way they mirror each other, surprised and hopeful, already thinking about round two. They really do make a great team.

She knows that, as with the business, things won’t fit together perfectly and seamlessly from the jump. Sometimes they will make mistakes, and sometimes they will say the wrong things, and that’s okay. When you love what you do—when you love _each other_—there is room for experimentation and for error.

2020 is the year they’re going to work harder than they’ve ever worked before, in all parts of their lives. But after all, things that are worth having are _worth_ working for. They all know how to put in the work.

*


End file.
